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Connor McDavid was born to play hockey

By Michael WoodsStaff Reporter

Sat., March 17, 2012timer6 min. read

Once Connor McDavid put skates on, it didn’t take long for his parents Brian and Kelly to realize he wasn’t like the other kids.

When Connor got his first pair of rollerblades just before his third birthday, he instantly rolled around the family’s unfinished basement without falling. Then he enlisted his mother and grandmother as goalies.

Once he had turned 3, it became clear he had a natural talent. At a public skating rink, Connor — who insisted on wearing a helmet and hockey gloves — relinquished his father’s hand and took off around the rink.

At 4, the only question was exactly how good he would become. In his first year of hockey, instead of joining the usual swarm of children hacking at the puck, Connor would calmly wait outside the throng, waiting for the puck to emerge. When it inevitably did, he would take off with it, the other children chasing him.

“You could tell right from the start that he was a little bit different. … He seemed to have an affinity for it,” said Brian.

Now, Connor McDavid is a star centre for the Toronto Marlboros AAA minor midget team and one of the most talked-about hockey prospects in years. The Greater Toronto Hockey League’s player of the year, McDavid turned 15 in January and plays a year above his age group on a team loaded with Ontario Hockey League prospects. He’s the best one.

Should McDavid be drafted into the OHL this year, he will be following in the footsteps of heavy company. New York Islanders star John Tavares and Barrie Colts defenceman Aaron Ekblad are the only two players ever allowed to enter the OHL draft a year early. They went first overall in 2005 and 2011, respectively. Tavares sat seventh in NHL scoring heading into Friday night’s action, and 6-foot-3, 205-pound Ekblad has helped guide the Colts back to a playoff spot.

McDavid is a far different player than Tavares: a pass-first, two-way centreman with uncanny vision, he said he models his game after Jonathan Toews and Pavel Datsyuk. Neither McDavid’s family nor Hockey Canada will confirm whether he’s applied for exceptional player status.

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But there’s no question McDavid’s talent level is high enough for him to be granted the exception and leapfrog all the players a year older than him to be the first-overall selection in next month’s OHL draft. The Erie Otters hold the first pick.

“He’s the real deal,” said Stan Butler, the Brampton Battalion bench boss. “He plays both ends of the rink, which a lot of young guys don’t, he’s a very dynamic offensive player and seems to score big goals at the most important times.”

According to analyst Craig Button, a former NHL general manager and scout, McDavid has “all the elements that top players have.”

“He has the hockey sense, the hand skill, the passing, the explosive skating, the ability to play in those areas of the ice that very few can, and be elusive and everything that goes with it.”

Sitting in the living room of the McDavids’ Newmarket home with his parents, dressed in a striped blue collared shirt and jeans, Connor looks and speaks like he’s ready for the big stage. He’s listed at 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds and has short, reddish-brown hair and a firm handshake. He is humble, composed and conversational.

“I think I see things that maybe some other players wouldn’t see,” he said. “The game feels slower. I guess things move slower for me than for some, I don’t know.”

Born in January 1997, Connor wears his birth year on his back just like his favourite player, Sidney Crosby. When Connor was 6, the McDavids tried to enroll him with a team of 7-year-olds in Newmarket, but said the local minor hockey association wouldn’t let him play.

Knowing he’d be “bored out of his mind” by another year in house league, his parents took him to nearby Aurora to play with 9-year-olds. He dominated the league.

“Even then, people were in awe of him,” said Kelly, human resources director at a European appliance company. Brian works as vice-president of distribution at Hudson’s Bay Company.

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Connor then joined the York Simcoe Express AAA team, which through the years won four Ontario Minor Hockey Association titles with Brian behind the bench.

Connor looks like a regular 15-year-old and cites “hanging out with friends” as one of his favourite ways to spend spare time. But he also possesses an uncommon intensity and unrelenting work ethic.

One day, Connor wandered out to the driveway and saw his father and older brother Cameron, who now attends Western University, working on hockey skills. Soon he developed his own obstacle courses using paint cans and hockey sticks. He would practise for hours in the driveway, or in the garage in winter.

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“I loved it. It was so much fun. Over time it just became part of my routine,” he said. “It’s a moral code, I think. In the summer, I can’t hang out with friends until I’ve done what I needed to do.”

For the last three years, Connor has attended Premier Elite Athletes’ Collegiate, a private school for elite athletes near Downsview Park. Most days, he’s out the door by 7:15 a.m., and home at 6:30 p.m. at the earliest. He’s on the ice every day, sometimes twice a day.

Players who apply for exceptional player status in the OHL are evaluated on multiple criteria including on-ice ability, academics and maturity. The closely-guarded process is administered by the Ontario Hockey Federation and the decision rests with a Hockey Canada committee.

OHL commissioner David Branch said he cannot confirm McDavid has submitted an application for exceptional player status. But, because of the “considerable speculation” at the start of 2012 that the youngster and his family would apply, Branch said he “put out feelers” to a number of OHL GMs to determine what they thought of McDavid’s playing ability.

“Everyone was unanimous that if he should choose to enter the draft they would select him first overall,” Branch said of his poll of six OHL GMs and one director of player development. It was a sentiment shared by OHL Central Scouting staff, he said. Josh Ho-Sang, McDavid’s highly-touted teammate many have pegged as the draft’s best player, would likely slide to the second spot if McDavid becomes eligible.

These days, Brian and Kelly McDavid hear more and more feedback comparing Connor to former Marlies such as Tavares.

Connor has garnered praise as a responsible defensive player — rare among offensive stars his age. Like many players with seemingly supernatural vision on the ice, Connor’s a pass-first, shoot-second player, something he’s trying to adjust, he said.

“At the next level, there’s a lot less time than minor midget. So you get into those spots, you’ve got to shoot the puck. That’s something I’ve always struggled with. I’m trying to work on that.”

On Tuesday’s first night of the OHL Cup — a tournament featuring the province’s best minor-midget teams — Connor saunters through opposing penalty killers and fires a snapshot home. It’s not the shot of a 15-year-old; it seems to freeze all the other players for a moment. Scouts in the stands of Mississauga’s Hershey Centre mutter and jot down notes.

It’s Connor’s second goal of the night. Later, he misses a chance for a third when the puck bounces off his stick, but the next day he makes up for it by scoring a hat trick. On Friday, he notches six points in two games. The Marlies face the London Jr. Knights at 12:15 p.m. on Saturday in the quarter-finals.

Brian and Kelly know the hockey world’s attention toward their son has only just started to take off. Connor said it’s happened “really, really fast” and he’s trying to take it one step at a time.

“We go to the rinks and we see the things he’s able to do on the ice, but he’s our son,” Brian said. “We don’t see him the way other people see him. We see him as a 15-year-old kid you’ve got to remind to clean up his room.”

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